It was spring break, and since Harry had gotten his new glasses he'd taken to routinely walking around the neighborhood. This served three purposes: first, he was able to see an entire world of nature and clarity which had once been unavailable to him. Second, it kept him out of the Dursley's house. This benefit could never be discounted. Third, it allowed him to do something that he would have never before dreamed of: meeting the neighbors.
Admittedly, Harry was not meeting his own neighbors. He had, in the past, been introduced to everyone from Number 1 to Number 24, all the way at the end of Privet Drive. Not one liked him—Aunt Petunia got on well enough with the lot that they all believed her propaganda. However, after a particularly harsh argument with the crazy lady who lived on Wisteria Walk Aunt Petunia stopped making any effort to get to know the neighbors on the other streets.
The way the neighborhood was set up, each street was exactly parallel to all the others and had 24 nearly identical houses, 12 per side, lining the road. At the far end of each road stood the same street running perpendicularly, and at the near end more streets branched off, always at ninety degree angles, to form the commercial district of Little Whinging. Harry was also vaguely aware that after the commercial district was the industrial one, where his uncle worked as a manager at Grunning's Grains, financial department.
This was not where Harry went.
Harry went to Astilbe Way, where, beginning with Number 1, he went to each house and introduced himself as Harry James Potter, eager worker. He marched up and down the lane, asking for any task and accepting pennies for jobs that he knew most people would be given dollars for.
Then he went to the next lane and did it all over again.
He skipped Privet Drive.
For the next two weeks (the length of spring break at Grogory's Elementary School), he cleaned gutters, weeded gardens, power-washed porches, painted fences, scrubbed rust off of mailboxes, walked dogs… from dawn to dusk he worked, saving every nickel, dime, and penny he earned.
And at each house that he worked he made sure to preform each job to perfection. Gradually the tone of the neighborhood when speaking about him shifted. "Maybe he's not so bad…" said Number 5 Camellia Crescent to Number 8 Camellia Crescent. "My gutters have never been so clean!" exclaimed Number 1 Peony Parade to Number 2 Astilbe Way. "Should've guessed something was up. That Vernon Dursley's always had a smarmy way about him." Grumbled Number 4 Wisteria Walk to his wife. Slowly, slowly, he began to prove his worth to the town of Little Whining.
No longer was he stared at suspiciously as he commuted from one job to another. No longer did mothers with their children cross the street at the sight of him. Now fathers gruffly muttered about how their sons were never so well behaved while he straightened trash cans up and down streets after a particularly harsh windstorm. Now grandmothers said thank you when he offered to help carry their groceries instead of eying him like he was asking them to do something to repulsive to mention in polite company.
At first he was worried that his aunt or uncle would question him about where he'd been all day, but he'd quickly found that none of his clients cared enough to actually confront his relatives and all the Dursleys cared about was if the chores were done. In fact, Harry was reasonably certain that they were under the impression that he stayed in his cupboard whenever he was out of their sight. In fact, so long as he was not directly in front of them they seemed rather apathetic to his presence as a whole. It would be very interesting to see how they reacted to him after they found out he (totally accidently, he promises!) made the neighborhood question their normality.
It was a very successful spring break.